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Saturday, December 31, 2011

This morning the Miami Herald took a look back at what it called "South Florida’s 10 most memorable moments of 2011", with a splashy front page graphic that answered the one remaining question I had about the paper: "Are there any editors left at Miami's only daily newspaper?"

The folks at the Fiesta Bowl won't soon forget the University of Miami football team - although if things keep going as they are they'd sure like to.

...Especially after a special party for the two teams was interrupted last night when Jerome Brown - after taking off his sweat suit to reveal his army fatigues - announced from the stage: "The Japanese didn't eat with the enemy before they bombed Pearl Harbor, either. Let's get out of here."

And then, a surprised crowd watched as Brown and the rest of the Hurricanes team got up and marched out of the combination steak fry and talent show.

As Miami retreated, Penn State punter John Bruno, who had been emceeing part of the program said, "...Yeah, but didn't the Japanese lose that war?"

Archdeacon continued with more pearls of wisdom from Brown:

"If the football field was meant for clean-cut guys, priests would be playing in the games," Brown said. "But the football field was meant for men out there trying to kill each other.

"That's why we wore the army fatigues out here on the plane. Wait till game day, even more of the guys will be wearing them. Those who don't have 'em are going to buy them here. We're on a mission."

The idea? Two decades later, who can remember how the idea came about? According to Highsmith, it started with a few of the seniors, like him and like Brown, the incorrigible All-America defensive tackle. And then it spread, and it became the latest outlandish brainstorm of a team that felt like it could do absolutely no wrong, even as the improprieties and transgressions mounted and the self-righteous criticism came hard and fast.

They were thugs. They were outlaws. They were the Oakland Raiders of college football.

So when somebody came up with this new idea, the notion of wearing combat fatigues all week long, to show the world that they meant business, that they were there to do a job, they all seemed to think it made perfect sense. Johnson and Jankovich were already out in Arizona, so the players were flying out on their own, and there was no one to tell them otherwise.

It wasn't until they stepped off the plane in their fatigues and saw the Penn State players walking around in suits and ties that they realized what their outfits had wrought. This had already become the most hyped game in the history of college football, and now here was an organic story line: The bad guys had dressed the part.

The Fiesta Bowl was played Friday night, Jan. 2, 1987. The 'Canes lost to Penn State, 14-10.

Kudos to the Miami Herald's David Smiley and Christina Veiga for their after action report on a near-riot that occurred Christmas night in Miami Lakes.

Thousands of screaming teenagers running through a shopping center.

A movie theater manager who says her employees were attacked by a mob.

And a high school junior who is recovering from a gunshot to the chest. This was a Christmas to remember in Miami Lakes, though one town officials would like to forget.

In the wake of a chaotic Dec. 25 melee and shooting that caused police to declare a “countywide emergency” in the sleepy suburb off the Palmetto Expressway, town officials vowed to step up police presence at the outdoor Main Street mall, promising to enforce an 8 p.m. curfew and round up unaccompanied minors starting Friday.

As far as I can tell, not one of Miami's TV news outlets reported on this when it happened. But, since the curfew goes into effect tomorrow night, expect lots of coverage at 10pm on 7News and the rest of Miami's TV news corps! Guaranteed.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

The one week between Christmas and the New Year when we take down the tree, load it in the car and drive it to the recycling center. After that it's time to dismantle the holiday decorations and store them in the garage for the next 11 months.

And in newsrooms across the country, reporters, editors and headline writers are engaged in a similar task.

They're busy packing up their hackneyed, Christmas-themed cliches and story ledes. The phrases and story ideas that never fail to make an appearance in newspapers and on TV news shows starting somewhere around the first or second week of December.

CBS4 got an early start back in November with this line in a Black Friday story: "The Grinch is now trying to steal Thanksgiving and it won’t be much of a holiday for an unprecedented amount of people."

Next on the list of tired holiday themes is the sad, heart-tugging story with a happy ending.

Any other time of the year a sad story with a happy ending would be just that: a sad story that ends happily.

But a week or so before Christmas, a "happy ending" suddenly becomes a "Christmas miracle."

A five year old Yorkie that disappeared during home burglary last week has been reunited with his owner.

The dog's name is Leo and if he could talk he could answer a lot of questions, like who broke into his owner's apartment on Friday and how he ended up on Miami Beach over the holiday weekend.

"It was like a Christmas miracle", said Leo's owner, Anita MacLannen.

Watch Lohse's report by clicking here. He trots out more cliches in his 2 minute report than most journalists use in an entire career.

Meanwhile, back at the Herald, at least one staffer managed to sneak a few Christmas cliches into his stories - two days in a row: "The NBA’s Christmas present to its fans: Allowing them to revel in the collapse of the Miami Heat one last time." -Herald sportswriter Joseph Goodman, Dec. 24, 2011

Here's one from sports columnist Greg Cote's Dec. 7, 2011 column: "What a remarkable time for South Florida’s major professional sports teams. It is Christmas season, and everywhere you look: Gifts!"

This year, the Herald managed to avoid doing a cliched, last minute Christmas shopping procrastination story...almost. "Some of the tents are still up, but all the merchandise is gone, and as Christmas Day creeps closer and closer, tree shopping procrastinators are running into a predicament: there’s nowhere to buy." -Jon Silman, Dec. 21, 2011

But, some references to Christmas in newspaper stories in December are inevitable.

Here are a few that were particularly well done: "The wish for a quieter Christmas Eve morning in the 1300 block of Northwest 66th Street turned deadly Saturday when a man allegedly stabbed the neighbor who asked him to turn down loud music, Miami Police said." -Elinor Brecher, Dec. 24, 2011

"A South Florida family got a big surprise on Christmas Day, but it wasn't delivered by a man in a big red suit." -Jared Goyette, Dec. 26, 2011

That's it for another year.

Will these tired cliches pop up in the media again next year? Is Santa fat?

The Miami Police Department will be conducting a DUI checkpoint and Saturation Patrol on Thursday, December 29, 2011 at NW 2 Avenue & 20 Street. This checkpoint will take place in the City of Miami’s Overtown NET Service area. The checkpoint will be conducted during the hours of 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM. The goal of this checkpoint is to identify and apprehend impaired drivers before they can kill or injure others. This checkpoint is part of the Holiday Season Impaired Driving Enforcement Wave.

The message is simple, Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over. Drinking alcohol and driving do not mix. If you plan to consume alcohol, you should also plan not to get behind the wheel of a vehicle. Unfortunately millions of drivers on America’s highways still think they are invincible, and they choose to jeopardize their safety and the safety of others on our roads. There will be no spreading holiday cheer behind the bars of a jail cell. Don’t let your 2011 holiday season end in an arrest or worse, death. Remember, whether you’ve had way too many or just one too many, it’s not worth the risk.”

As you celebrate the holiday season enjoying traditions, food, family and fun, be reminded that the Miami Police Department will be out in force this holiday season from December 16, 2011, to January 2, 2012, to arrest anyone caught driving drunk behind the wheel.

This effort is in conjunction with the “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over”, “Lets Eliminate Aggressive Driving” and the “Buckle Up Florida: Click It or Ticket” campaigns.

Members of the local media are invited and encouraged to support our effort by passing this information during their local news coverage. For additional information, please call (305) 603-6525 or visithttp://www.nhtsa.gov/Impaired.

Here's how it works: A newspaper pays a reporter to write a story. The reporter's story appears on the paper's website. Huffington Post then comes along and rewrites the story - adding no original reporting of its own - and posts the story on its site with a link to the original newspaper story.

Huffington told her readers that HuffPost Miami would, "dig deeper in an effort to tell the stories of all the people who make up this unique city -- one that is a combustible blend of the old and the new, the glittery and the grimy, the transient and the entrenched. Our coverage will include the struggles that are familiar to cities all across the country but that have hit Miami particularly hard."

So, how's that working out? Let's check up on HuffPost Miami and see how they're practicing "the serious, old-fashioned work of traditional journalism."

For starters, Random Pixels has learned that HuffPost Miami has a staff of two. A third paid staffer has yet to be hired.

Maybe I'm naive, but where I come from it's a little hard to "tell the stories of all the people who make up this unique city" with a staff of just two or three.

So, what does the staff of HuffPost Miami do?

They're doing what made Arianna rich ... which ain't even close to "serious, traditional journalism", unless, of course you got your journalism degree from San Quentin or Raiford.

The HuffPost Miami staff is hard at work, busily stealingborrowingcutting and pasting aggregating stories they find on Miami's news sites.

What Silman was referring to was HuffPost Miami's wholesale cut-and-paste job of his story on the family of a woman killed in a crash that won an almost $9 million judgment against Luis Cruz-Govin, the teen driver who caused the crash.

Instead of summing up the story in a few paragraphs and then linking to the Herald story, HuffPost Miami staffer Amanda McCorquodale rewrote Silman's story, cutting and pasting key details and elements from the story.

McCorquodale tries and fails to cover up her literary larceny with some shady sleight of hand that wouldn't fool Stevie Wonder.

Silman writes about a "partially consumed" bottle of cough syrup found in Cruz-Govin's car. In McCorquodale's story it becomes a "half-empty" bottle of cough syrup. Nice try Amanda.

Here are more examples:

From the Herald story:Myriam del Socorro Lopez was a passenger in a car driven by her husband, travelling eastbound on Bird Road, when Luis Cruz-Govin, 17 at the time, wasspeeding and weaving in and out of traffic in his father’s Subaru.

From the HuffPost story:In 2008, Myriam del Socorro Lopez was in the car with her husband on Bird Roadwhen 17-year-old Luis Cruz-Govin,speeding and weaving, crashed into their vehicle. Lopez died on the scene.
______

From the Herald story:“The (defendant) was clearly a chronic texter,” Goldfarb said, citing the 127 texts Cruz-Govin sent on the day of the accident.

From the HuffPost story:Not only was Cruz-Govin speeding, according to the Herald, he was a habitual texter. On the day of the accident, records show he sent 127 texts, the Herald reports.
______

From the Herald story:According to the complaint, there was marijuana and cocaine in the Subaru, and a partially consumed bottle of Delsym cough syrup.

From the HuffPost story:Police also found marijuana and cocaine in [Cruz-Govin's] car as well as a half-empty bottle of cough syrup.

In her story, Campbell cuts and pastes entire quotes and chunks from Viglucci's story:

From the Herald story:In a statement to The Herald, Christian Goode, president of Genting’s Resorts World Miami subsidiary, called the Herald building “an affront to smart urban planning’’ because it blocks views of and public access to Biscayne Bay.

From the HuffPost story:Genting, [...] immediately responded with a statement declaring the One Herald Plaza "an affront to smart urban planning." (NOTE: Here Campbell attempted to change the phrase "the Herald building" in Viglucci's story to "One Herald Plaza" but neglected to edit out the word "the." Busted!)
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From the Herald story:“It may be an uphill a battle, but it’s a worthwhile undertaking,’’ said Heritage Trust chief executive Becky Roper Matkov after the group’s board voted to proceed with the application, which is now being drafted. “I’m sure we will have a lot of opposition from monied interests. That hasn’t stopped us before.’’

From the HuffPost story:“I’m sure we will have a lot of opposition from monied interests," Matkov told the Herald, who are rent-free tenants in the building until 2013. "That hasn’t stopped us before."
______

From the Herald story:“There’s just one issue: Does it meet the criteria?’’ said historian Arva Moore Parks, former chairwoman of the city’s planning board, who supports the designation. “Then you have to follow the law.’’

From the HuffPost story:Historian Arva Moore Parks, former chairwoman of the city's planning board, told the Herald, "There's just one issue: Does it meet the criteria? Then you have to follow the law."

Random Pixels contacted Campbell today to get her side of the story. She declined to say anything on the record until she could get an OK from her bosses in New York.

Random Pixels also reached out to Herald managing editor Rick Hirsch this afternoon.

By phone, Hirsch declined to comment except to say, "I'll say what I have to say directly to the Huffington Post. There are some things we'll be discussing soon."

Others at the Herald agreed to talk with me on the condition I not use their names.

Of Huffington Post Miami's practices, one long-time Herald reporter told me, "Sure they link to our stories, but who's going to click through after they've read the entire story on the Huffington Post?"

Another Herald journalist was a little more direct: "We knew this was going to happen. The crop of people they hired couldn't get hired at the Herald," adding, "If you can't find an original story in this town on your own, then you ain't a journalist."

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

FedEx doesn't exactly have a pristine reputation when it comes to customer service (neither do UPS and the USPS, for that matter), and this surveillance footage from someone's house isn't going to help that image any.

A FedEx delivery guy nonchalantly walks up to the person's home and chucks an unwrapped box over a fence taller than him and onto the driveway on the other side. Inside the clearly labeled box is a computer monitor, which was subsequently smashed.

The video was posted on YouTube by user goobie55 on Monday. Here's the description:

FedEx Guy Throwing My Computer Monitor

Here is a video of my monitor being "delivered". The sad part is that I was home at the time with the front door wide open. All he would have had to do was ring the bell on the gate. Now I have to return my monitor since it is broken.

After receiving more than 20,000 photo submissions from over 130 countries, the National Geographic Photo Contest 2011 concluded last month and the judging began. The winners were announced this week, with the grand prize awarded to Shikhei Goh for his capture of a dragonfly riding out a rainstorm in Indonesia. Goh was awarded $10,000 and a trip to the National Geographic Photography Seminar next year.

Recently, I made a telephone call to a woman named Cheri Brand to ask if I could drive up to Ocala and talk to her about the Coppertone ad. There was silence on the phone; reporters learn to dread silence. Finally she said, "Oh, no. Not that. It's so old. You don't want to write about that. Really. Nobody cares."

The Coppertone Girl with the bare cheeks, now 48, was in no mood to bare her soul.

"You know," she said, "you don't want to talk to me. You want to talk to my mother. My mother is much more interesting than I'll ever be. Mother is the real story."

Usually, when somebody says don't talk to me, talk to my mother instead, a reporter comes down with the willies. The gray-haired mother produced by the reluctant interviewee turns out to be a saint who whips up apple butter by the gallon, or a kindly grandma who knits smiley faces on feathery quilts for shivering orphans, or a reincarnated Elizabeth Browning who minutes ago finished writing an 800-line poem about her cat, Slinky, and is looking for a publisher.

Not that there is anything regrettable about quilts, apple butter and cat poetry that always rhymes moon with spoon.

Joyce Ballantyne Brand, 86, was the opposite of an apple butter gal. I did not bring a martini shaker with me to Ocala, but I should have.

One commenter wryly describes the action on a message board for Miami Beach cops: "That video depicts the MBPD [boat] floating away from Martinez and him getting wet after 10 years of sitting up in the dock master office."

Veldora Arthur, the City of Miami's first black female firefighter, and at one time the highest ranking female in the department, was sentenced Friday to 57 months in federal prison for her role in a mortgage fraud case reports the Straw Buyer blog.

According to the Straw Buyer blog, federal sentencing guidelines had called for a sentence of 57 to 71 months.

North Miami police and other police agencies will be conducting a DUI checkpoint Friday night, Dec. 16 from 8pm to 2am in front of the North Dade Justice Center at 15555 Biscayne Blvd.

You've been warned.

DUI CHECK POINT SCHEDULED FOR FRIDAY, DEC. 16 IN NORTH MIAMI

The North Miami Police Department will be conducting a Multi-Agency Christmas Holiday DUI Checkpoint and Miami-Dade County Wide Saturation on Friday December 16, 2011 during the hours of 8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. located at 15555 Biscayne Blvd (Northbound).

This effort is in conjunction with the Florida Sustained DUI Enforcement Program, “2011 Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over" and the “2011 Buckle Up Florida: Click It or Ticket” programs.

The North Miami Police Department Traffic Unit will show zero tolerance for motorists who violate Florida’s traffic laws. All officers will be on alert to apprehend motorists who are driving impaired or with invalid driver licenses and ticket those who are unbuckled.

For more information on the Stop Impaired Driving program, and the Florida Click It or Ticket Program, visit their websites at www.stopimpaireddriving.org and www.clickitfla.com.

One of the disgraced cops cited in the story is former Miami-Dade cop Gandhi Lora. Before his arrest in 2003 on child pornography charges, Lora worked at Miami International Airport making $56,056 a year according to a Nov. 8, 2003 Miami Herald story.

Gandhi Lora is no longer a working officer, but the former Miami-Dade cop still earns a state pension, which has paid him more than $500,000 since his law enforcement career ended in 2005.

The pension fund continues to pay him $7,200 each month - a decent wage considering that Lora is a registered sex offender convicted of possessing and promoting child pornography.

Every year, Florida's Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission takes the law enforcement certificates of hundreds of officers, ending their careers. But just because an officer loses his or her badge, it does not necessarily mean a loss of pension benefits. Existing laws protecting pensions are so strong that it is difficult to strip someone of their benefits, even if that person lost their job and their freedom after a felony conviction.
[...]
Lora, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, could not be reached for comment.

State Sen. Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton, said he was frustrated to learn that money from the state's pension fund was going to sex offenders.

"It's mind-boggling," Bennett said. "It's something that we have to get fixed."

Click here to see Lora's sexual offender flyer on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's website.

In a move that will save Miami-Dade taxpayers hundreds and thousands of dollars, several Miami-Dade police officers were told Tuesday that as of Jan. 3, they will have to use their own wheels to get to work.

Seventeen officers who live in Collier, Palm Beach and Monroe counties have now been told they have to park their patrol cars when there shift is over.

"I can tell you there will be sweeping changes that will go into effect Jan. 3. Those cars will be pulled back," said James Loftus, director of the Miami Dade Police Department.

Local 10 first exposed the issue two months ago, showing viewers video of a Miami-Dade police car parked in a driveway across the state in Naples. For years, the officer has been allowed to drive 1,210 miles per week to and from work in his county patrol car. It costs $10,000 in tax money for gas each year just for the commute for this one car.

The video outraged some Miami-Dade commissioners, who were in the process of cutting the budget.

According to records, 10 Miami-Dade officers live in Palm Beach, four live in Monroe and three live in Collier.

According to a memo, (below) as of Jan. 3, police vehicles will be restricted to the jurisdictional boundaries of Miami-Dade and Broward only.

"All vehicle privileges outside these jurisdictional areas are hereby rescinded," said the memo.

"I decided it's not in the best interest of the department. Sometimes we look at these things over a period of time and we try to be fair about it," said Loftus.

Hosted by WLRN-Miami Herald News Anchor Phil Latzman, the program will explore the prospect resort casino gambling in South Florida, from a variety of angles. The special will feature panel of guests, including experts and lawmakers, offering perspectives from all sides of the issue, just as the state legislature prepares to convene and vote on key resort casino gambling, possibly changing the region forever.

Audience input is welcome during the show. Listeners can send their comments via email, phone calls or by following us on Twitter at #floridabet.

Jeff Klinkenberg, staff writer at the St. Petersburg Times - and one of Florida's great storytellers - reminded his Facebook friends today that his first byline was published 46 years ago in the Miami News.

In his most recent story, appearing in tomorrow's Times, Klink finds journalism's equivalent of a sweet spot. Literally.

Steve Melton, 62, holds a cane grinding every December at his Pasco County ranch as a reminder of a time when Floridians couldn't buy sugar in a bag at Publix. From the Panhandle to the Keys, folks of every race and creed grew sugar cane, harvested the stalks in the fall, squeezed the stalks into juice and then boiled the juice into sweet syrup they sprinkled into coffee or over pancakes or even meat. In the age before mass communication, a cane grinding was also a social gathering where Floridians might exchange news and gossip, tell jokes and share their dreams.

This is absolutely beautiful. Romney assumes that the old guy in the flannel﻿ shirt and the Vietnam veteran hat is a conservative and therefore safe. The beauty is in the way the gentleman structures the question so that Romney thinks it's a softball and he jumps into the anti-gay talking points with both feet. Awesome.

The absolutely best part is the staffer's lame attempt to extract Romney before he can do any more damage. Beautiful.

In July, Miami Beach cop Derick Kuilan nearly killed two people after allegedly plowing into them on his police ATV while taking a woman for a boozy late-night joyride, according to the Miami Times. He was fired and is awaiting trial on reckless driving and DUI charges.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Playing the role of faux American pilot Captain Steve Rogers, who showed up to apologize to "American treasure" Baldwin, the actor was reminded by SNL Weekend Update host Seth Meyers that mobile phones are known to interfere with the communications systems on an airline. It was pretty much the point the airline attendants who say Baldwin abused them were trying to make when they pulled his word-building privileges on the plane. But get a load of his response:

Would you really get on an airplane that flew 30,000 feet in the air if you thought one Kindle switch could take it down?

Miller and Moskovitz report on "The grim tale of Laura and Julio Barahona’s futile efforts to find a savior for their niece and nephew ... contained in hundreds of pages of police reports and interviews released to the Miami Herald Thursday by Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle."

This is old-fashioned, no-punches pulled reporting which local TV stations will no doubt seize upon today and report without crediting the Herald.

The bad: A Miami Herald editor who shall remain unnamed, posts a link Thursday on Facebook to a story about a worker who was fired from the Whole Foods Market on Miami Beach after complaining about raw sewage in the store, and who has now filed suit in federal court.

When I point out that the story is two years old and was first reported by New Times when it happened, the editor responds by saying "The case was filed in federal court this week."

Oh, okay, I see...raw sewage floods an upscale supermarket but it's not a story until a lawsuit is filed two years later. WTF?

On Thursday he asked Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi for a urine sample reports the Miami Herald's Mary Ellen Klas. "You supported the TANF drug test bill and I am just wondering if today you would be willing to undergo a drug test of your own as somebody who receives taxpayer money?" Mandvi asked Bondi.

Bondi pulled out a plastic cup. "Well, that's very interesting that you should say that,'' she said. "Because as attorney general, I'm always prepared."

His cameras followed Bondi as she and her entourage walked away. "Thank you have a great day,'' Bondi said. "My name's on the top."

It was, scrawled in Sharpie pen. "How do we know it's your urine,'' Mandvi asked incredulously. "How do we know it's not apple juice. Alright we will test this in the lab."
[...]
His cameraman noted, "She's a pretty woman." Mandvi agreed. "She just has incredibly beautiful smelling urine."

Sarasota Herald Tribune reporters Matthew Doig and Anthony Cormier have another story today in their excellent series, "Unfit for Duty," which is taking a multi-part look at Florida police officers who keep their badges despite repeated instances of misconduct, and in many cases, criminal acts.

In today's story the reporters reveal that troubled Florida cops often find second chances by finding jobs at smaller departments. Doig and Cormier found that some of Miami-Dade County's smaller police agencies employ troubled cops at a higher rate than that of larger departments.

A Herald-Tribune computer analysis of the FDLE's misconduct cases and employee data supported the idea that the state's smaller agencies are a dumping ground for problem officers.
[...]
At the largest agencies, 3.9 percent of the officers had committed a violation serious enough that it had been sent to the FDLE, which decides whether to end an officer's career. At the smallest agencies, 8.1 percent of the officers had a misconduct case that put their career in jeopardy — more than twice as many.

The difference is even more stark when comparing the state's largest agency with some of the smaller agencies that operate in its shadow.

Four police departments in Miami-Dade County — Biscayne Park, Sweetwater, Opa-Locka and Hialeah Gardens — have, on average, 20.7 percent of their officers with a state misconduct case. Meanwhile the number is only 4.9 percent at the Miami-Dade Police Department.

Cormier and Doig report that...

Of the 19 Sweetwater police officers sent to the commission for misconduct, 12 were hired after incidents at other agencies, including six from the nearby Miami-Dade County or City of Miami police departments. The former Miami officers include Saul Fernandez, who faced discipline for a sex offense; Ignacio Menocal for cocaine possession; and Eduardo Demurias for indecent exposure.

Sweetwater Police Chief Roberto Fulgueira said he personally vetted each of his officers before hiring them. He cited an old law enforcement expression: "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."

Normally used in reference to people, guilty or not, who have to ride in the back of a police car and spend time in jail, Fulgeria used the line to illustrate that an officer stained by a disciplinary incident is not necessarily an officer unfit for duty.

"This stuff is supposed to follow you forever?" he asked. "For the rest of your career? Of course I'm going to give somebody a second chance."

More information on the Sweetwater Police Department's dirty and sordid past can be found by clicking here and here.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

UPDATE: Click here to see the Daily Show segment that aired Thurs., Feb. 2, 2012.

UPDATED 1x below.

Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi interrupted a press conference [Wednesday] by Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) to ask him to prove to the state taxpayers that he’s not on drugs by peeing in a cup.

“You benefit from hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars every year, so would you be willing to pee into this cup to prove to Florida taxpayers that you’re not on drugs, that you’re not using that money for drugs?” Mandvi asked.

Scott replied that he’s “done it plenty of times.”

Mandvi then tried to pass a cup forward: “Would you pass this forward to the governor? We can all turn around, it’s fine.”

It's must reading for anyone who has fond memories of the Miami Herald's Sunday magazine.

Among the story's highlights is an account of how a full-color photograph of Dave Barry flipping the bird ended up on the magazine's cover in September 1989. It's safe to say it was the first and last time an image like that would see the light of day in the pages of the Herald.

In September 1989, Weingarten and company published a cover story about the new Orlando Magic basketball team in which they mocked the city of Orlando and referred to its team’s general manager as a weenie. The article was written by Dave Barry, whom Weingarten had hired in 1984, thereby launching the career of perhaps the most famous humor columnist of the late 20th century. The article’s stated purpose was to “whip up a mindless hatred on the part of our readership in hopes of creating a classic sports rivalry.” Below a photograph of Magic cheerleaders, rather than printing their actual names, Weingarten made up monikers like Flunky, Poobles, and Spaz.

Click to enlarge.

What may be most memorable about the issue is the cover photo. Pictured is Barry spinning a basketball on his middle finger. The cover line extends “heartfelt best wishes” to Orlando on the arrival of its new team.

Weingarten somehow convinced the then executive editor of the Herald that flipping the bird “isn’t really offensive to people.” Turns out it really is offensive to people, and the paper got letters, lots of letters, including one from a mother who asked what she should tell her son when he asked why his hero, the great Dave Barry, was making an obscene gesture on the cover of a magazine. The executive editor later said running the photo was the only decision she ever regretted.